vive
by theatrhythms
Summary: once upon a time, there was a world where battle was commonplace and war was an everyday occurrence. danger lurked around every corner, and every soul hung somewhere in the balance between good and evil, light and dark, love and hatred - all those epic, eternal struggles where only the strongest of will and heart came out victors in the end. this is not that world.
1. introduction

**an introduction**

Welp, after many years of not touching this project and months of deliberating and planning and procrastinating and such, I've decided to restart _Viva_ — a story that is/was a lot like a prototype to _Brothers_. Now, you may ask, what exactly is _Viva_?

In short, _Viva_ is a project I used to work on and obsess over when I was eleven and twelve years-old. It used to be a massive alternate universe crossover between every fandom I happened to be a part of, but now that I'm revamping it, I'm limiting it to just Kingdom Hearts and the Final Fantasy Series.

Back when it was my main project, I would write _Viva_ in much the same fashion that I write _Brothers_, but now, it's simply going to be a verse I write in every so often or do art for. I want to point out that it's not going to be written linearly, at this point in time — I'm probably going to jump around the loose timeline I've constructed. There is a massive amount of characters in this verse, as well as many pairings and relationships. Things are going to be confusing as well as complex, and I apologize for that, but this story is mostly for my pleasure (and of course, you can ask questions).

(Also, I do not recommend reading the orignal story for the sake of my pride and dignity, and so that if you're actually interested in following this, you start on a clean, untainted slate and aren't mislead by anything the original might state.)

Basically, the premise of _Viva_ is this — all the characters have been reincarnated and placed in a world like ours, one that's normal and not at all associated with fantasy. The only thing that connects them to their original counterparts is their memories of the lives they lived before. At the moment, I'm putting together a blog for this whole thing and writing character profiles and plot descriptions and all that good stuff.

So, yeah. That's all. c: I don't expect this to gain much of a following or anything, but feedback is more than welcome and I'm definitely down to answer your questions. The name for the story is '_vive_' so that I don't have to delete the original story (because as crappy as it is, I don't want to lose it entirely).

**- Gabi.**


	2. fantastic, bizarre

**Fantasies: _Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts._  
Pairings: _N/a._  
Characters: _Riku, Sora, Cloud, Zack._**

* * *

**weird **[ weerd ]  
_adjective  
_fantastic; bizarre

Things get really weird at night.

Well, not _every_ night, but when there isn't any partying or unnecessary carrying on and everyone is talking at an acceptable volume for the most part and Riku isn't being too much of an ass and Sora isn't making snarky comments in the corner and Cloud isn't weeping about something and Zack isn't finding himself in someone's bedroom for a reason that includes the phrase '_we had a thing once upon a time_', things get quietly reminiscing, déjà vu, too mushy hugs and kisses and the rain is terrifying when it beats down on the rooftop because it reminds everyone of death, angels exist in many forms and we're all semi-celebrities and it's too late to be awake but sleep is out of the question when you've already done too much of it for the hundred years you've lived so far, listen to everyone breathe and feel comforted like you've never felt comforted before sort of _weird_.


	3. pulchritude

**Fantasies: _Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy IV._  
Pairings: _Zack/Aerith, Zack/Reno, Zack/Cloud._  
Characters: _Zack, Aerith, Angeal, Sephiroth, Terra, Riku, Sora, Reno, Kain, Cloud._**

* * *

**pulchritude **[púl·krə·tood]  
_noun  
_beauty

_One_: the way Aerith's hair curls around her face, accents it like a Victorian picture frame encasing and ensuring the immortality of a girl who, because she was pretty in the moment her photograph was taken, will never again know the meaning of the word '_ugly_' and will never once see the inside of a catacomb and _damn_, she is the definition of perfection, all creamy white skin and perfect chestnut brown hair and those jade green eyes that make Zack feel like burying himself in a quilt of her and dying quietly, even if his blood would be as vain as it would be cold.

_Two_: laughter, especially when it's coming out of Angeal, Sephiroth, or Terra, who laugh and smile so little it should be considered a sin, and when it's genuine, _oh_, when it's _genuine_, when Angeal will drop the papers he's grading to hide his eyes in his palm and let out that quiet, rumbling chuckle of his, when Terra will stop trying so hard to be an asshole and just _give the __**fuck**__ in_ to Zack's teasing and _smile_, plead with him to _shut up, you dork_ in a way Zack knows is the very opposite of serious, when Sephiroth will take his glasses off and press his hands to his face and pull his hair halfway up into a ponytail and look at Zack like he's simultaneously the most ridiculous as well as the most wonderfully delightful person he knows and just _laugh_ like he never ever _ever_ does, like the series of unusual noises escaping him are so special they should only be tasted on his tongue very rarely – when it's _genuine_ laughter, Zack is a winner in the truest sense of the word.

_Three_: those moments when Zack can see the wall inside Riku breaking – even if only a little –, those times when something _human_ and not android or stony or fantastic or deific will peek through his sea green eyes or slip into the tone of his voice or have him reaching out for Zack – not with his arms but with the unsure little frown on his face and an ambiguous comment or two and a pair of petitions in his gaze, and Zack will know that Riku hasn't totally forgotten what the Earth feels like beneath his toes or forgotten how to feel or forgotten the importance of being flawed or forgotten the simplicity of his brand-new existence or forgotten how to be _warm_, and Zack knows that Riku's _alive_ when he's allowed to _hug_ him like he's more than just his best friend – he's someone who knows what it's like.

_Four_: Sora, who lives up to his namesake with his grandiosity and his constant presence and his blue-blue-_blueness_, and he isn't blue in the sad, endless sort of way, but in the way his benevolence is something you can identify simply by his colors, and by his colors, I mean his _smile_, I mean his laugh and how he looks at everything like it's an adventure and anyone like they're his friend, and when it's overcast, _everybody_ is affected by the lack of brightness and _everybody_ is praying for a sunny day, because really, they _need_ Sora – or at least _Zack_ does – and when it's nighttime and Sora's grown dark and sleepy, people will look at him and wish upon his stars for better days, and, unlike the real, uncontrollable, unpredictable sky, Sora will happily oblige.

_Five_: the cigarette smoke that climbs the invisible ladder of air above Zack's head when he lies pressed against Reno's side and attempts to catch his breath, and at first, he hates looking at it, hates watching it rise because it reminds him too much of himself – secondhand and glamorous and constantly obscuring the senses – but it slowly comes to hypnotize him just like Reno knows so well how to, slowly works its way into his bloodstream and has him addicted, especially when he can taste it in his mouth and thick on Reno's tongue, especially when it lassos him into bed and finds its way into his own lungs, and Zack feels like he's slaying a dragon when he's got Reno beneath him – no longer the vulgar fighting creature he so often wears the skin of but a lover in the truest sense of the word, and smoke is billowing from his nose and his mouth and getting caught in the space between their lips, and the only thing Zack _keeps_ hating about it is the smell it leaves on his clothes, something his nose likes to pick up when he's kissing Aerith goodbye.

_Six: _the pigeons that strut and hop around him when he's lying in the grass at the Twilight Park – soft, susurrating, gray and white and dusky blue feathers, with their silly red eyes that aren't an indicator of evil for once, with their normalcy, their oddness in the sense that Zack hasn't seen or encountered them before this life, and if he miraculously manages to stay still and silent long enough, they'll perch upon his knee, his foot, maybe even his chest if he's lucky, and they'll remind him of how different he is from the person he once was, remind him of the massive, gaping lack of anger inside him, anger that's been replaced with simple anxiety, sometimes sadness, sometimes even _panic_, but never anything as red as the eyes of the birds that rest on him until he finds it too difficult to refrain from speaking up.

_Seven:_ sometimes his thin, stiff lips will curl into little crescent moons of amusement, _happiness_, positives that he'll only ever feel truly comfortable expressing with his words or his eyes and never with his mouth, and Zack will find himself getting lost in the feeling of having accomplished something great, of having a loved one be more than simply _content_ for once, be great enough to _smile_, and Kain almost _never_ smiles because Kain is a man of comfort zones and careful stoicism and he's made an art out of controlling everything his existence will output, and Zack's made a habit of trying to trick him into forgetting about all the pretense and all the baggage and all the caution and all the _pain_ he's constantly carrying around, and the two of them will quietly battle at this as two soldiers on the battlefield of time and hearts and vocal cords when they're together, and sometimes – when Kain's thin, stiff lips will curl into a _smile_ – Zack will know he's won.

_Eight_: when he's in the middle of one of the ridiculous conversations he so often gets stuck in at around one o'clock in the morning – a drawn-out dialogue about the importance of separating your darks and your lights when doing laundry lest you end up with your clothes looking like they've come out of a dumpster, as Genesis says; world history according to the well-intentioned students of Phoenix Downs University laid out to him by an exceedingly, hilariously exasperated Angeal; Cloud's odd, slightly terrifying theory that things you've received from others somehow enable your loved ones to watch you at all times – a notion that prompts Zack to suggest that the Duran Duran poster the blond got for his birthday three years ago is Tifa's magic mirror to every blistering night (afternoon, morning) of passion they happen to share; he and Riku's mutual attempts at figuring out the genotypes and phenotypes of just about everyone they know – a feat they realize is impossible when Riku points out that everyone's family tree is screwed to shit, but their conversation goes on for about an hour and a half nonetheless; Sora relating his first experience with marijuana to him, his visions of Hades in a flower crown and bananas galore and how he skateboarded face-first into Sephiroth's garage door and he and Riku nearly woke the whole neighborhood with their asinine laughter; a phone call with Reno on the subject of the most bizarre episode of _Little Einsteins_ he saw that morning.

_Nine_: Cloud's eyes – two beautiful blue orbs with the faintest rings of green around the pupils, two baby worlds constantly plagued with storm, two windows to the museum of thought that is the blond's mind, two of the most wonderful things Zack's ever beheld in his twenty-one years, and two becomes Zack's favorite number when he's looking into those two eyes, when he and Cloud are two people existing in the world at the same place at the same time, when their two hands hang clasped together between their hips as they walk along the campus courtyard, when he's parting Cloud's two lips with his own, when he's found passion between Cloud's two thighs, when he's found peace in Cloud's two arms, when Cloud's two ears are red and flushed when he's feeling bashful or he's laughed too hard, when Cloud's two shoulder blades are exposed and it's all Zack can do to keep from kissing them, when they lie together – just the two of them – and whisper endless, meaningless things into the darkness of a bedroom where only they belong, and when Cloud looks at him with his two eyes deep enough to stand in, that's when _two_ becomes Zack favorite number, and that's when he knows the sky won't ever inspire him quite the same way it used to, when he knows he will never see the sea ever again without seeing Cloud's eyes first.


	4. phases

**Fantasies: ****_Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy Type-0, Final Fantasy VIII._****  
Pairings: ****_Zack/Cloud, Sora/Kairi; implied Zack/Aerith, Axel/Roxas, Zexion/Lexaues._****  
Characters: ****_Cloud, Lulu, Zack, Riku, Sora, Roxas, Ventus, Sephiroth, Cissnei, Loz, Kadaj, Fujin, Zexion, Sice, Lexaues, Yazoo, Angeal, Reno, Aerith, Tifa, Genesis._**

* * *

They all went through phases to get to where they are now, phases that are like convenience stores and gas stations on the sides of endless highways and interstates in the way that they're temporary, in the way that the four of them have fueled up and idled and found pieces of treasure disguised as trash at them – these rest-stop phases – for the better half of their lives, the half tainted by memory. **  
**  
It's the fall of six years ago when Cloud learns what it's like to exist in a perpetual state of open-wound, '_rapidly losing oxygen because you can't get your head above water_', '_nails in your bed and nails in your smile and nails in your head_' sort of _**pain**_. Lulu diagnoses it as a combination of some form of post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression – a result of the war constantly raging in his mind – but Cloud is content with simply calling his condition '_hell_', or sometimes even '_shepherd_', for it favors taking him by the hand and leading him away from everything tangible and real, from Zack's smiles and Riku's quips and Sora's laughter and Roxas and Ven curled up to his chest and his back, so small and young and _hungry_; favors leading him _**away**_, down the street and past the high school and the park fountains and the mall and the pizza place, all the way to the edge of the town none of them are able to escape; favors pulling him up and out of his bones and his flesh and the physical confines of his own body when he sits in the bathtub until the water grows icy cold and he ceases to shiver or blink or _move_ in even the slightest of ways and Ven gets worried enough to call 911.

He gets better, of course. Now, he takes his medication every morning and night and is calm enough to actually cook dinner for Roxas and Ven by the time six o'clock rolls around and goes on walks only when he's enough in the world to know where he's going, and he can see and touch and taste Zack and appreciate Riku's biting sarcasm and laugh in unison with Sora without trying too hard and feel how _alive_ Roxas and Ven are when they crawl into bed with him, and he isn't as hopelessly lost as he was before and he feels enough like himself to be acerbic and flippant and feisty without faking it and he's not stuck wishing for reprieve night after night after night, but cold water still makes him feel half-dead when he's submerged in it and sunsets have the ability to send his vision swimming, and that's always going to be a part of him.

They all go through a period of time when recklessness seems like the best method of dealing with the mundane madness of their brand new world, when life is a game and the game is exciting, when Zack convinces himself that the only way he's ever going to get the most out of love is by drowning himself in it, by hiding in beds and in between sheets and in the shade of a half-angel, cowering and writhing and living and breathing and shuddering beneath him or over her, the most animal he's ever had the pleasure of being; when Riku accidentally gets lost in Sephiroth's numerous bottles of vodka, bottles of wine, when his head tips back and he lets his hand hang out the window of Zack's car and drops cigarettes all along the roadways (Rue d'Oblivion, Twilight Avenue, Destiny Lane) because his fingers are clumsy with alcohol and he's all tangled up in Morpheus' robe, held prisoner in the god of sleep's clutches; when nothing is quite thrilling enough for Sora, when the boy is homesick for the worlds he used to brave and so seeks to simulate those wonders by running, jumping, _flying_ – relentless and free – pushing his body as far as he possibly can without breaking it too badly, decorating himself with cuts and scrapes and bruises and fractures, and all for the sake of reliving the days when such injuries were common and borne for a much nobler cause; when Cloud spends weeks and weeks not caring for a _goddamn_ thing, least of all himself.

Zack still remembers those lovebites, still sometimes quivers at Sephiroth's touches (especially the most innocuous ones), still finds himself longing for Cissnei's arms – two of his favorite hiding places. Riku's fingers will occasionally itch for alcohol when things get rough and life becomes a weight to bear instead of a second chance or a moment of being. Sora's scrapes have turned into scars that won't ever fade. And apathy still terrifies Cloud to this day.

There is a time growing up when '_family_' is a cussword to Riku, when brotherhood isn't a relationship so much as an eternally-binding condition, when he is one of seven silver-haired children and he's almost certain he's the sanest of all of them, all of them crammed into one house under the guardianship of their father, who – despite the wealth and grandeur and wisdom he once and still does possess – is somewhat underequipped to run an insane asylum, which is what their home becomes when they're all occupying it.

Loz and Kadaj become wolves in their status as the oldest children, find pleasure in terrorizing all of their younger siblings by say, putting hair dye in Fujin's shampoo or deliberately misplacing all of Zexion's favorite books or conveniently exploding into the bathroom every time Sice is in the shower or just _beating_ on Riku, grabbing him – only twelve years-old – around the neck and driving their knuckles into his crown, hoisting him up and off of the ground and carrying him out to the pool where they dump him headfirst into the water, picking fights over the most asinine bullshit just to get a rise out of him. _Countless_ times, Riku ends up stuck waiting for one of his older siblings to pick him up after school for _hours_ because Sephiroth is working overtime and he hasn't a car or driving skills of his own, only for Loz or Fujin or Zexion to text him _six years_ after the fact to say '_oh, something came up_' or '_sorry, Lexaeus and I lost track of time_' or '_I forgot about it completely_' or '_I was supposed to pick you up today?_'. And _every night_, without fail, a full-scale _riot_ breaks out, and all because nobody is mature enough to handle a simple disagreement like any civil human being should and would, all because privacy means _nothing_ to them and everything seems to be free game and '_Dad, Kadaj won't stop touching me_,' and there are four different people playing five different kinds of music and watching eight different TV programs all at the same time, and more than anything, Sephiroth _will not_ tolerate noise in his house, so _everyone_ is in trouble simply because they're all under the same roof, and because everyone is in trouble, everyone is _pissed the __**fuck**__ off_, and Loz is flicking spaghetti sauce at Riku's face and Kadaj is throwing meatballs at Sice and Yazoo is complaining about the state of the tablecloth and Zexion is trying to get out of the dining room as quickly and quietly as possible and Sice is cursing everyone out and Fujin is insulting her siblings' collective intelligence and Riku is _punching Loz dead in the fucking face_ and Sephiroth is expending all the energy he has left in him at the end of the day trying to _**keep order**_, but when food starts flying and all but two of his children are seriously attempting to _choke_ each other to death, it's impossible for him to do anything but pin as many human beings down as he can and scold them all until at least one of them is crying.

All of that ended, for the most part, when the oldest children began to move out. Of course, nights when Loz, Yazoo, and Kadaj come back home bring them all back to the days when their lives were one gigantic mess simply because they were all tangled up and intertwined with one another, but that chapter of Riku's life is pretty much _over_ now, thanks to the passage of time and a little (a lot) of help from Zack, Sora, and Cloud.

Then there is the time when Zack discovers that there is virtually no moment in which he isn't angry in some way. No matter what situation he may find himself in, no matter how satisfied or enthusiastic or tired or friendly or _anything_ he may seem, there is always something bitter and fiery underscoring his state of mind, following him like a shadow (and we all know that the darkest shadows take shape under the brightest light).

And for awhile, that anger feels _good_ – _welcome_, even – to be completely honest, and it almost gives Zack an additional purpose in life, makes him feel justified and consoled and solid and _strong_, and _yeah_, he knows that Angeal probably wouldn't approve of his disposition, and _yeah_, it does get to be a little suffocating and a little claustrophobic and a little _infuriating_ sometimes, and it's not like he has any way to output all that negative energy outside of lacrosse or the sidewalks he'll run over and over again, stamping out the fire inside him with every step because it's gotten too hot and too destructive for him to bear, and it's not anger like Cloud's anger, not something he can carry around for an indefinite period of time and come out unchanged, because he can feel it warping him on the inside, feel its influence and feel the days slip by as it gnaws on his innards, and he thinks his memories are what embedded it in him, thinks that the time he never spent as a SOLDIER and all the death he never saw and all the betrayals he never suffered are what keep him so fucking _enraged_ all the time, and he thinks that it's his anger driving a wedge between him and Reno, and he thinks that it's his anger making him scared to touch Aerith, and he thinks that it's his anger turning his mood into something like the sea – tempestuous and ever-changing – his anger that's made him want to be alone so, _so_ much more than he's ever wanted or even thought to want before, that has him starting arguments with Angeal over the most trivial of things, that puts him behind the wheel of his car and sends him, like Cloud, to the edge of Phoenix Downs, where he'll park off the side of the road and blast music from his speakers loud enough to make himself go deaf and talk into the space in front of his mouth until he can hear himself over Michael Angelakos and Frank Ocean, until he's so short of breath that he can appreciate the way air moves in and out of the cavern of his chest and finally _calm down_ at the thought of his own humanity.

He still has moments like that, moments when he gets so blindsided with _pissed off_ and _screw you_ that it gives him a fucking headache and makes his hands shake, but after several incredibly drawn-out late-night conversations with Angeal, learning how to meditate, and sitting under three pairs of worried, confused, concerned eyes night after night, Zack's transitioned from being _perpetually angry_ to simply _incredibly aware_ – a mindset that's just as enlightening as his wrath was, but a lot more relaxing (and a lot more _fun_).

And it's not like they're perfect _now_ – they've _never_ been perfect. It's not like they aren't _human_, not like they live in a vacuum, not like they don't exist in a world that's constantly changing with each passing day. It's not like several lifetimes of experience and growth and learning and _moving_ have magically eradicated all of their flaws and shortcomings. It's not like their faults make them bad people, either. And it's not like they aren't _still_ going through phases.

Now, Cloud has his hands full with Roxas and Ventus, with having to wake up at five-thirty in the morning to roll his twin brothers out of bed, nudge them on into the bathroom and the kitchen and eventually out the door, see them off to school, get food in their stomachs when they start making faces at him, protect and guard them with his life when they're in any sort of danger, scold them when they act like the stupid teenagers they have every right to be, ruffle their messy blond hair and straighten their shirt collars, stay up watching Netflix with them when they're too shaken-scared-excited-alive to sleep, pretend not to be too embarrassed or flustered or thoroughly exasperated when they want to ask him questions like '_Why is my pubic hair brown instead of blond?_' or '_Should Axel and I use water- or oil-based lube?_' or '_When was the first time _you_ ever had sex, huh?_', remind himself that he's their brother before he's their legal guardian, remember to smile a little bit more around them because they start to worry about him when he doesn't, turn the lights off at ten o'clock and thank whatever deity is close at hand for letting the three of them come out of another day alive and sane and together and _a family_.

Now, Sora finds himself more in love than he's ever had the pleasure of being, even more so than he was in his last life, because at this point, he's watched Kairi grow for more lifetimes than one, seen her smiles and heard her laughter and twined her fingers with his and laid beside her in beds and backyards so many times he feels like he was _made _for it, and tucking her hair behind her ear and sweeping her up into his arms and feathering butterfly kisses all over the soft skin of her face is enough to put the sun in his sky blue eyes and steal the breath from his lungs, not to mention sink him deeper into the mess of affection and wonder and _warmth_ he feels for her, and he doesn't feel profoundly changed or up in the air or stupid with glee, _no_ – he feels like he could spend the rest of his life being just as thrilled with _her_ – the person he loves the very most in this world – as he is right now, as he was the day before, as he was the day he first laid eyes on her a millenium ago, and that's the most satisfied he's ever been with _anything_ in his whole double existence.

Now, Riku is ready to hightail it the hell out of his father's house, ready to enroll in Phoenix Downs University and move on in with Zack (and eventually Sora, when he gets out of high school as well) and stay out all night and sleep until noon and legally drink alcohol and _be an adult_ and do all of the things being an adult entails, and he's ready to do it without Sephiroth telling him that he's trying to grow up too fast and without Zack saying things like '_I trust you, but are you sure you want to do that?_' or '_You're not trying to impress me, are you?_', because Riku is so damn _tired_ of being required to have a legitimate reason to _want_ something, tired of having to make excuses for aspiring to do things Zack and Cloud and Squall and Terra and _everyone else_ is able to do freely, tired of waiting for college, waiting for _freedom_, waiting for privilege and entitlement and that wonderfully terrifying in-between space you occupy when you've just become _grown-up_, that in-between space where you're fresh and youthful and _invincible_ and able to touch the sky if you wanted to, and all because you're finally – _finally – _an _adult._

Now, Zack lives with one foot off the ground, always ready to go because chance seems to fancy pulling him every which way at all times, because he can't ever seem to get his head completely out of the clouds, can't ever seem to stop _moving_, and he's at a point in his life where everything is constantly being put into perspective, where his mind simply won't allow him to see things through a film of subjectivity or as anything but _exactly_ what they are, where he's learning tons and tons about himself on a weekly basis, where the days are breezy and he's content with simply feeling them out, not trying to perfect himself or fix anything but the cracks in Cloud's smiles or the paint on his wall where his cats have scratched it off, where he finds himself spending way too many (read: not _nearly_ enough) evenings laying on the floor or sitting on the fire escape kissing Cloud long after the blond has halfheartedly begged him to stop, where his bed is a place he tends to miss because he's so often running across town to pick this up for Tifa or go to that party with Reno or buy groceries so Angeal and Genesis can lay off on all the passive-aggressive comments or spend the night playing _Mass Effect_ and making strawberry-banana smoothies and aggravating the _shit_ out of Sephiroth with Riku and Sora, where he's suddenly a brother and a son and a friend and a lover all at once and several times each day – driving Sora and Vanitas and Roxas and Ven to school when Squall can't for whatever reason; dropping by his old house to pester Terra and eye the wedding magazines Aqua's left on the coffee table; discussing the idiosyncrasies of the world over coffee with Angeal at Mog's Cafe and enduring all of the man's occasionally overbearing, eternally sagacious advice; riding around with Riku whenever he needs to get away from his family and all the stress that accompanies them; eating Italian food at Gabbiani's with Angeal, Genesis, and Sephiroth; playfully flirting with Aerith or Reno or Cissnei when they stop by the bar and pinching Tifa's side when she reprimands him for it; crossing the university apartment complex and taking the elevator up to Cloud's floor, where he'll walk down to the second-to-last door, knock his signature three-knock knock, negotiate his way inside with the promise of Chinese and many, _many_ kisses, and proceed to spend hours watching _Amadeus_ and _Fight Club_ with his best friend/boyfriend/all-time _favorite_ person, letting his chin rest on the blond's shoulder so that he can kiss and blow against his neck, pull him into his lap, hold him tight around the middle and nip lightly at his ear and slip his fingertips beneath the hem of his sweater until they're sprawled out over Cloud's bed, limbs intertwined and mouths pressed together and the concept of time long forgotten – and after running all over Phoenix Downs and after attending all his classes for the day and after wrapping up the laundry and after showering and brushing his teeth and pulling on one of his old t-shirts from high school and a pair of gym shorts, Zack will light himself a cigarette and sit down in front of his laptop at last, and he will remember his age and remember where he is and remember that he's a year from graduation, a year from his own apartment, a year from becoming what he's wanted to be since he was fourteen and _still_ going through phases, and he will _write_ until it's time for him to sleep off his breezy day, and he will sleep until it's time for him to start another.

* * *

**comments and questions are always welcome!**

**- gabi.**


End file.
